The Visitor
by tpel
Summary: Guerrero is too busy to help out, and when he finally shows up at the office he's not alone . . .


**The Visitor**

"You're gonna make me say it, aren't you?" Winston sighed into the phone.

"Make you say what?" asked Chance, on the other end, his voice coming in clearly, despite crashing sounds in the background. "Hang on," he said, and Winston heard brakes screeching and the rat-a-tat of automatic weapon fire.

Then nothing.

"Chance?" Winston said, trying to keep the worry out of his voice, "Chance!"

"I'm back," the other man replied, sounding a bit winded but cheerful, "What were you saying?"

"OK, fine, I'll admit it: we need Guerrero on this one." Winston preferred to have as little to do with Chance's amoral friend as possible, but he had to concede that Guerrero had a talent for obtaining information that had kept Chance in the land of the living on many occasions.

"Uh uh," Chance responded, "he's busy this weekend. We'll have to manage without him."

"_Busy?_ What could be more important than . . ."

"We've _had_ this conversation, Winston. He's an independent contractor. He doesn't have to be there every time we call."

"Yeah, I'm sure he's rescuing kitties from trees as we speak," Winston grumbled.

"Heh. Whoops – gotta go. I'm sure you'll figure out something." More screeching, then the connection cut off.

"Yeah, yeah, I always do."

XXXXX

An hour later, Winston was no closer to determining who was trying to kill their client, and hence, Chance. He had confidence that his partner could keep the assassins at bay for a while, but without knowing the source, it was only a matter of time before . . . well . . . bad things happened.

"Dammit," he muttered, finally breaking down and picking up the phone. He dialed quickly, steeling himself for Guerrero's gloating when Winston admitted that he needed the little creep's help.

"Leave a message." Voicemail.

Again.

And again.

Forty-five minutes and more than a dozen messages later, Winston was fuming. A normal person might go hours without checking his messages, but not Guerrero – the guy might as well have his cell phone grafted to his body. Clearly, he was deliberately ignoring the calls. Winston decided on a new tactic. He went upstairs and called from Chance's phone. That wouldn't fool Guerrero, of course, but it might piss him off enough to get him to call back.

Sure enough, Winston's phone buzzed. He picked up and was greeted with an irritated, "Dude, _what_?"

Winston grinned and replied in an excruciatingly polite tone, "So nice of you to finally return my call. What part of 'it's an emergency' wasn't clear?"

"The part where it's my problem. I'm not working today. Deal with it."

Before Winston could respond, the line went dead. _Shit._ He was counting on Guerrero giving him grief, but didn't expect him to flat out refuse to help. Time to take a hard look at the situation: could he handle it alone? After running through everything he'd dug up so far, weighing the possibilities – mostly dire – and trying unsuccessfully to reach Chance again, Winston decided to give it one more shot.

At the annoyingly mellow voicemail prompt, he began, "Look, Chance told me not to call you. But I haven't been able to reach him in a while, and the last time we spoke it sounded like the job was tanking. The funding for the shooters goes through a dozen hands, and yeah, if I had 24 hours I might be able to sort this mess out before Chance and the client get perforated, but as it is I need –"

"You're embarrassing yourself, man," Guerrero's drawl cut in, "Alright. I'll be there in twenty."

XXXXX

Thirty-seven minutes later, the elevator doors opened and Guerrero stepped out. Winston was about to comment on the time, but he stopped, frozen mid-snark: Guerrero was not alone.

There was a little girl with him, maybe six years old. She had dark hair, sharp features for someone so young, and eyes of misty blue. The color was not what was most striking about the girl's eyes; rather, it was the fact that she kept them completely averted. Not only did she not look at Winston, she didn't seem to be looking at where she was walking either. She held onto Guerrero's wrist – really more the cuff of his shirtsleeve – and let herself be drawn along behind him. Winston briefly considered that she might be blind, but no, she seemed to be gazing intently, just not at anything he could see.

She was a cute little thing, but there was something off about her expression and the way she walked . . . and that's where Winston's thought process ground to a halt, as the implications of her presence hit him. A small child . . . with Guerrero. Nobody in their right mind would ask Guerrero to baby sit. However peculiar her demeanor might be, she didn't act like she'd been abducted. Having ruled out the more natural assumption that Guerrero was holding her for extortion purposes, Winston's brain finally went to the place it was avoiding: the girl was probably Guerrero's . . . offspring.

Winston shuddered. He realized he must be gaping like a fish.

"Winston, Tina. Tina, Winston," Guerrero said offhandedly, then he smirked, "Not polite to stare, dude."

Winston sputtered, wanting to explain that he wasn't gawking at a possibly disabled child; rather, he was transfixed with horror at the thought that Guerrero had reproduced. Well, there really was no nice way to put that last part . . .

By the time Winston recovered the ability to speak, Guerrero had slipped into the conference room, with Tina in tow. He popped in a DVD, so that the movie would show on the flat screen at the front of the room. Like many of the rooms in their office suite, the walls were largely glass. Thus, Winston could see that Tina remained standing a couple of yards away from the TV screen as Guerrero exited the room.

Guerrero approached, a subtle twitch at the corner of his mouth showing that he was enjoying Winston's discomfort with the situation. Instead of explaining anything, he prompted, "What've we got?"

Winston filled him in, and Guerrero started doing what he does best, working phone and laptop simultaneously. Winston continued to research his own angle on the problem, but he couldn't help glancing surreptitiously into the conference room. Tina had remained standing, and now, as the movie played she was . . . dancing. No, that wasn't quite the right word. She had her right leg behind her left, and lunged forward, throwing her weight onto her left foot, then rocked backward into her original position, over and over again. The movement was rhythmic, but didn't seem to have anything to do with the soundtrack of the movie. In any case, it wasn't clear that she was even watching the movie, though she could have been – the trajectory of her lunges was about 45 degrees from facing the screen.

Autism maybe? But not the quirky socially awkward kind – this kid really seemed out to lunch. Some other mental problem? Winston didn't feel confident making any judgments in this regard, so he glommed onto something he _did_ feel confident saying, "_Plan 9 from Outer Space_? You're showing a six-year-old Plan 9 from Outer Space?"

"She's eight," Guerrero responded, sounding mildly irritated at the error, "and she likes it – keeps her busy."

Given that his companion found nothing wrong with murder and blackmail, Winston didn't see much hope of convincing him of the (admittedly much lesser) evil of using television as a babysitter. Besides, it was technically Winston's fault that Guerrero was working right now, instead of doing whatever it was he would have been doing with Tina. Winston's brain froze up again as he tried to picture Guerrero doing any typical "dad" things. He shook his head slowly, then refocused himself on the task at hand.

XXXXX

An hour later, things were mostly under control on the Chance front. They had tracked down the assassins' employer and cut off funding. Currently, through a combination of Winston tipping off local authorities and Guerrero placing strategic threats, they were gradually throwing the operation into disarray. Chance had checked in, and while he and the client were by no means out of the woods, they had put some needed distance between themselves and their pursuers.

Tina's interest in the movie seemed to be waning; she'd begun circling the room, running her finger along the walls as she went. Guerrero went into the kitchen and came back with a banana, peeling it as he walked. He entered the conference room. Tina slowed her laps, her eyes focussed on a point up near the ceiling, but her head tipped in Guerrero's direction. He broke off about a third of the banana and held it out to her. She pushed his hand away in a movement that clearly showed she rejected the offering. Guerrero polished off that piece in about two bites. He continued eating, as she hovered nearby. When he was almost done, he broke off a small piece from the other end of the banana and held it out to her. She made a funny movement with her fingers, but accepted the fruit and popped it into her mouth.

This time, when he left the room, she followed him. Guerrero deposited the banana peel in the office wastepaper basket, rather than the kitchen garbage, in an obvious attempt to annoy Winston. Winston scowled, but not as deeply as usual, distracted as he was by their visitor.

Guerrero nodded over his shoulder at Tina and commented, "Picky eater."

That made Winston smile at the irony, "Not everybody can be a human garbage disposal, you know."

Surprisingly, Guerrero didn't go for a snide remark about Winston's weight here. Instead, he continued, "Seriously, she'll go a whole day without eating anything, or only a cracker or something. Her grandma makes a big deal out of it. When I have her, I just throw food at her every hour or so. Sometimes it sticks; sometimes it doesn't."

"OK, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that you have a kid. Please don't tell me you also have a mother."

"Relax. Grandma is her mom's mom, not mine," Guerrero chuckled, sitting down at the desk to check progress on his laptop. For a minute or two, the only sound was his rapid-fire typing, though Winston could tell from his relaxed posture that the speed did not indicate any kind of desperate situation.

Tina wandered over and stood against the side of Guerrero's chair. Without shifting his eyes from his task, he scooted over a little and she perched on the edge of the chair. It was getting on into evening now, dim enough that the light from the laptop screen reflected in Guerrero's full-moon shaped glasses, image flickering as he clicked back and forth between multiple open windows. Tina's gaze, for once fixed on something that Winston could identify – the computer – bobbled along with these transitions.

Winston had no idea what the little girl could be getting from what she saw; he could barely keep up himself when the tech-whiz shifted screens in such rapid succession. Yet she seemed entranced and content, leaning lightly against her father's knee.

And then she was done. She slid off the chair and fluttered off to resume touching the walls. Softly, Guerrero said, "Bye-bye."

Though he always had trouble reading Guerrero's tones of voice, Winston thought he heard a note of affection, and maybe something else, mixed in with the usual sarcasm. It made the ex-cop think about the compartmentalization he encountered so frequently in their line of work. Chance, for instance, was genuinely kind and caring, and he would put his life on the line to protect his client or his friends, yet he frequently failed to consider the impact of his crazy stunts on innocent bystanders. Lawmen and criminals alike were tough as nails on the streets, then went home to kiss their wives and kids.

Doing the math, Winston figured that Guerrero was still a full-time low-life mercenary at the time Tina was born. He inquired abruptly, "So, what did you do, fix her a bottle then go out to ki—uh, take care of business?"

Guerrero glanced up sharply at the out-of-left-field question. But then he smirked and responded, "Nope. Didn't even know about her 'till she was three."

Figures he'd manage to answer the question without answering the question. But that got Winston thinking. "Yeah, right. You know everybody's business. You didn't know something like that, means you didn't _want_ to know."

Peering over the rims of his glasses, Guerrero's eyes narrowed. Winston kept a straight face, grinning inwardly that he'd managed to get under his enigmatic colleague's skin. Guerrero liked to imply that he lived by some kind of code, though as far as Winston could tell it was the most permissive code imaginable. Apparently abandoning one's children was a no-no even under this lax standard, so Winston's implication stung.

But only for a moment. Guerrero shrugged, "Eh. I knew she existed and that it was _possible_ she was mine – I'd hooked up with her mom a couple of times when I was in town. But they were living with a guy who thought he was the dad. I didn't see any point in messing with that."

Yeah, naturally, he wouldn't care about little things like infidelity and deception. Winston decided he really didn't want to know any more sordid details. He glanced around the room and realized that Tina was no longer there. "Uh, where did –"

"Thataway," Guerrero tilted his head toward the open living area. He didn't seem concerned that his child was out of sight. According to Chance, Winston was overprotective. Guerrero, on the other hand, tended toward _under_protectiveness (flip a coin my ass!), so Winston wasn't sure he trusted the guy's blasé attitude toward the situation. He got up to make sure everything was all right.

Winston found Tina on the second step of the staircase, heading upstairs. Well, he assumed that's where she was going. Right now she was just stepping up from the second to the third step and down again, over and over. Wait – there she goes, now she was doing the third to fourth step. After ten or twelve repetitions, she moved on to the fourth and fifth steps.

"Hey Guerrero," Winston called.

No response.

Winston was getting worried. "How about you come on down here, Tina," he said. When she didn't turn around, he stepped onto the first step and reached up tentatively to lift her back down.

Ever tried to pick up a feral kitten? It doesn't matter how big you are and how small it is, it suddenly becomes a frenetic whirlwind, impossible to hold on to. That's what happened when Winston took hold of Tina's shoulders. She exploded in a shaking twisting motion, causing Winston to let go and rock backward on the stairs. He caught himself on the railing just in time to avoid tumbling onto his butt.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Guerrero called out.

_Jerk._ "Yeah, thanks for the advice. You wanna give me a hand here?"

Guerrero poked his head into the room. "Dude, leave her alone. She knows how to walk up stairs."

"Uh huh, and what's at the top of the stairs?" Winston asked with exaggerated patience.

"Chance's pad. What, you think he's got a basket of hand grenades on his coffee table, or something?" - Guerrero broke off, cocking an eyebrow. Winston saw the realization that this was not such an unlikely scenario wash over the smaller man's face.

"Yeah, OK, knowing Chance . . ." Guerrero muttered. He headed up the stairs, past Winston.

Winston laughed derisively, "Hand grenades, power tools, throwing stars, tranquilizer darts . . ."

"I get it," Guerrero snapped. He reached the step above Tina, turned to face her, and put his arm across her path of ascent, saying, "You can't go up there, baby."

". . . tear gas, firearms, plastic explosives . . ." continued the litany from below.

"_Still_ get it," Guerrero interrupted, as he herded Tina backwards, down a couple of steps. Then she stopped, took his wrist and pushed it in the direction of the top of the stairs, as if she were trying to use his hand to reach for something. Guerrero paused, tilted his head to the side a little, and asked, "What do you want from there?"

Tina pushed his hand upwards again. Following her gesture with his eyes, his puzzled expression suddenly brightened into amusement. "Seriously? You remember?"

"She's been here before?" Winston asked, still standing at the foot of the stairs.

"Once, a few years back," Guerrero explained. Addressing Tina, he said, "OK, hold on a sec." Then in a quick, fluid motion, he picked her up by her upper arms and carried her down the stairs, depositing her next to Winston. She didn't seem upset by this, and complied when he told her, "Stay there."

Guerrero went upstairs and briefly disappeared into Chance's apartment. Then a tennis ball came bouncing down the stairs, followed by a big lumbering brown-and-black dog: Carmine. Guerrero came after, wiping his hand on the leg of his jeans.

Tina let out a high-pitched squeal of glee – the first sound Winston had heard her make. She chased after Carmine, who soon realized he had something more fun to play with than the tennis ball. Tina patted him roughly, trying to throw her arms around him. Winston wasn't sure if she was trying to hug him or climb onto his back; in any case Carmine turned and sat. When Tina came around in front of the dog, he licked her in the face, causing her to giggle and jump back. Thus began a game of Tina circling the huge dog, trying to grab him, while he retaliated with sloppy kisses. Every now and then, one of them would break into a run, and the other would give chase, to be followed by more grab-lick-giggle-repeat.

For once, Winston appreciated the fact that Carmine was a lousy watchdog.

XXXXX

Hours later, Chance's arrival distracted Winston from strangling Guerrero.

Winston and Guerrero were in the kitchen, arguing. It was one of those frustrating, pointless debates that Winston knew he shouldn't even bother engaging in. It seems Guerrero is against taxes. Not just tax increases or exorbitant taxes – _any_ taxes, period.

Winston had tried reasoning with him (that was his first mistake): "Don't you want little things like roads and schools and police protection . . ."

"I could do with a few less cops, actually," Guerrero replied amiably, "and anyway, it's the fruit of the poisoned tree, dude: government sponsored theft of private funds."

"You gonna go join the Tea Party now?"

"Nah – they're a bunch of idiots."

As Winston opened his mouth to respond, it occurred to him that Guerrero might be putting on this whole thing to just mess with him. _I could cut my blood pressure medication in half if I stop having conversations with this lunatic_, he mused.

Then the elevator chimed and Winston heard Chance calling from the other room, "I'm back." Pause. "I brought pizza."

Winston, again, started to speak, but Guerrero, perhaps thinking Winston was going to continue their debate, cut him off with "_Pizza_," spoken with emphasis, as if it clearly trumped anything Winston could possibly have to say.

Winston and Guerrero went out into the living area, where Guerrero immediately relieved Chance of the warm white cardboard box.

"Glad to see you're, you know . . . not dead." Winston greeted happily.

Chance spared Winston a grin, then returned his attention to the cozy sight in the living area: Carmine was collapsed half asleep on the floor, with Tina curled up napping against his broad furry back. The smell of pizza had roused the big dog somewhat, though he didn't spring to his feet, perhaps out of consideration for the little girl using him as a pillow. "OK, this is just too cute," Chance commented, smiling indulgently. Then he said to Guerrero, "Give me your phone, willya?"

Guerrero managed to hand over the phone, while simultaneously inhaling a slice of pizza. Winston was always surprised at how Guerrero tended to automatically do what Chance asked, without his usual pain-in-the-ass attitude.

Chance used the phone to snap a picture of Tina and Carmine, then handed it back to his friend. Guerrero looked surprised, and slightly annoyed.

Chance explained, "Hey, I met Tina, what – four years ago? And since then, I haven't been able to get you to show me a single picture. If it was left up to you, there would be no photographic evidence that your daughter even exists."

"Yeah, that's kind of the point," Guerrero replied, his flat tone lilting up a little at the end.

_Oh, right._ It occurred to Winston that when a guy intimidates people by threatening to break into their houses and kill them, dropping the names of family members to imply that they might be in danger too . . . yeah, of course his kid would be a target. Winston felt rage bubbling up within him, mostly at the faceless goons who might harm such a helpless child, but also at the father who inadvertently painted a bulls-eye on her back.

Gazing at Tina, then back at the phone in Guerrero's hand, Chance said gently, "I'm sure you'll find a way to keep it safe." Then, with a teasing smirk, he added, "Of course, nobody's stopping you from erasing it . . ."

Guerrero rolled his eyes and pocketed the phone.

XXXXX

Author's note: There's not a whole lot of _Human Target_ fanfic out there, but as far as I can tell, mine is the third to include Guerrero's daughter. Over on LiveJournal, rhymeswithhope created Mercy, an infant, and, of course, My Beautiful Ending gave us Cindy, an 11-year-old. Tina doesn't have a lot in common with her fictional "sisters", except for sharing Cindy's love of Carmine. And sharing a gender: despite the fact that Baptiste never mentioned whether Guerrero's child was a girl or a boy, I've seen no fictional sons. I wonder why?

In any case, my goal was to show Guerrero relating to an unusual child, without losing that delightful mix of dry humor and borderline sociopathy that makes him such a great character. Please let me know how far you think I succeeded in this.


End file.
